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| layout | title | author | tags | |
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| post | I, BTW, use Arch | Ta180m |
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Ubuntu (you thought this was going to be about Arch, didn't you?) is a great distro. Cue Reddit screaming. Look on any web forum and you'll find people patronizing Ubuntu. Why? For having a straightforward installer that I can use to get Ubuntu up and running in half an hour with my favorite apps? For being the most supported distro by third-party developers? (They always have a PPA) For dominating server OSes in terms of market share? Nope. It's for n00bs and beginners.
There are so many things wrong with that claim, but this post isn't about Ubuntu. OK, it kind of is, and Ubuntu sure has its share of problems, but let's get to the main point. I previously used Ubuntu for over a year, first in WSL, then as my primary OS. But then I met Arch. People sometimes ask me why Arch over Ubuntu, so I'm going to sketch a few reasons why. Memes aside, let's begin.
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Hemorrhaging edge: Oh what, it's actually bleeding edge? Oops. Anyways, Ubuntu has absolutely expansive package repositories that can be further augmented with PPAs, but they can be pretty stale (Er, I meant stable). As in one or two years old, especially with the LTS versions. You probably wouldn't want to eat most stuff that's that stale. Well, no problem with Arch. You get the latest and greatest, at the expense of stuff randomly failing and having to debug and fix it for an hour. Great tradeoff.
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DIY: Ubuntu gets a lot of flak for forcing its defaults on people (although they can be easily changed). At its core, Ubuntu is still Linux (Or GNU/Linux if you're one of those people) and just as flexible and powerful as Arch. But Arch on the contrary is built on top of this idea of assembling your own OS. And this, the process of slowly watching your OS come together from the most basic building blocks, is the coolest part about Arch, not bragging to your friends and the memes.
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Documentation: Yep, I'm talking about the ArchWiki. Best Linux documentation out there. Period. It has everything. Really. And if it doesn't, it's pretty easy to add it yourself and help the community! So go RTFM!
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Arch Build System: What? Why this as number one? Well, if you've ever heard of the AUR that's flaunted by Arch supremacists (not all Arch users are toxic 13-year-olds that go around screaming to everyone that they use Arch, OK?), this is the core of the AUR. The Arch Build System's impressive flexibility derives from basically being a shell script, enough said, so you can do pretty much anything. And the centralization of the AUR steps it up a whole new level. While third-party developer support for Arch is quite horrendous in some areas, here's where the community steps in. Perfect! (As long as you read the PKGBUILDs!)
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Us: AKA the community. Whether it's the ArchWiki or the AUR, the community is always the main driving force behind Arch. Have a question about something? No problem, hop on the IRC or the Matrix or the BBS, and some friendly user will get you squared away. Without the Arch community, there is no Arch Linux.